If Israel strikes Syria again, all bets are off

With every passing week, we see more and more evidence that Syria’s civil war is both seeping out of the country’s borders and, like a flame sucking in oxygen, is pulling regional powers in at the same time.

To Syria’s south, Jordan – which has just finished holding elections – faces a near unprecedented influx of Syrian refugees. To the east in Iraq, tens of thousands of Sunni demonstrators – many of whom identify with the largely Sunni uprising next door, and cheered on by an Al Qaida-linked group – blocked a major road in western Iraq in protest against the Shia-dominated government. To the north, today’s bombing at the US embassy in Ankara has been blamed on a banned Left-wing group, the DHKP-C, but most early lists of suspects included Jabhat-al-Nusra, Al Qaida’s Syrian front, while relations between Turkey and Syria are their lowest ebb.

The most volatile of all issues, however, may be Israel’s intervention into the Syrian crisis this week. It appears that Israeli jets bombed not just a convoy of Russian-supplied SA-17 anti-aircraft batteries, located at a military base northwest of Damascus, but other targets also, including a biological weapons research centre.

It remains unclear whether the missiles were stationary or were being moved, but in the preceding days the Israeli cabinet had been meeting feverishly and shouting, to anyone who would listen, that chemical weapons were not the only thing that they were worried about. Since the base was less than five miles from Syria’s border with Lebanon, Israel might have been concerned that the missiles would be transferred to Hezbollah, challenging Israel’s hitherto absolute air superiority over the militant group.

There remain a few puzzling aspects to this story. Syria only received these missiles from Russia over the last couple of years (ironically, they were purchased after Israel destroyed a half-built Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007). Why would the regime hand over something so advanced to Hezbollah just when it most needs its air defences to deter a no-fly zone or other foreign intervention?

One possible answer is that the missiles were in fact being moved within Syria for safekeeping, and Israel, unable to tell where they were headed, pounced. That is speculation for now. But, if there was such confusion, it highlights how easily one side might misperceive the red lines of another, and how easily a broader war could be sparked: imagine, for instance, the possible consequences of an inadvertent explosion at a Syrian chemical weapons site.

For now, the strike isn’t likely to trigger a larger war. Although Syria has publicly blamed Israel – something it didn’t do in 2007, when it was last bombed – it has incentives to keep its retaliation purely verbal. The Syrian military is heavily stretched by the rebellion, and it showed restraint the last several times that it was similarly attacked.

Iran’s bark is also worse than its bite. A day before the strike, one of Iran’s most senior foreign policy figures insisted that "an attack on Syria is considered attack on Iran and Iran’s allies". Then, after the strike, Iran’s deputy foreign minister warned of "grave consequences for Tel Aviv". But put this bluster aside, and there’s little that Iran can do. It can target Israeli interests outside of the region – as it probably did last year, in retaliation for the assassinations of its nuclear scientists – but it also needs to keep its powder dry in case of direct threats to itself. Hezbollah, itself unaffected by the bombing, won’t want to rush in. A wider war would put pressure on the group's domestic standing, and it has no wish to be blamed for the destruction of Lebanon.

Russia, still sending assistance to the Syrian regime, also joined in the condemnation. But its concern is simple: that Israel’s actions do not become, and are not seen as, the thin end of a wedge for broader military intervention to topple Assad. It might be especially worried about this, given the ease with which Israeli jets sailed through Syria’s supposedly fearsome air defences. But as long as Israel doesn’t make this a habit, and given the strike was not intended to help the rebels, Russia is unlikely to lift a finger in response.

The bigger problem is that Israel might have set a relatively low bar for intervention. Sure, the SA-17 is a special case. It cuts to the heart of Israel’s greatest advantage: undisputed air superiority over every neighbour. But there are a number of other non-chemical weapons in Syria that will be of concern, such as the Yakhont anti-ship missiles, also of Russian origin.

Israel’s planes are still loitering over Lebanon, presumably to keep the pressure on Assad. But if, as this newspaper has reported, “more cross-border strikes [are] likely”, and the United States has given a “green light” for these, it will become harder and harder for Syria to abstain from undertaking the retaliation it is probably desperate to avoid. At some point, it is no longer tenable for Assad to sit there doing nothing. What makes this more complicated still is that, according to Time magazine’s sources, the US is also prepared to conduct air strikes if rebels look like getting hold of chemical weapons.

Israel’s policy towards Syria has, for two years, consisted of keeping its distance and sending warnings to Assad. As the Syrian state weakens and, at the same time, it has less and less to lose, Israel will find it increasingly difficult to insulate itself from events next door. If air strikes recur, this policy is going to fall apart.